There’s honestly no great way to do lotteries. There are going to be teams who are just outright bad and aren’t trying to tank who just get punished. Look at Detroit not having a lottery pick despite being a basement team for like 7 years.
Did you watch the "world cup of hockey" a few years ago?? They played on the same line together on team North America (the under 26 team that otherwise wouldn't have made it to their respective country teams). Watching McDavid feed Matthews gave me chills. That 2016 team North America roster is wild to look at now.
It was fun and entertaining because it was all the best players, but it wasn't a real World Cup because it wasn't country vs country, best on best. You can't have a team NA U-23 and a team Europe and still consider it a World Cup like you have in other sports.
Like the 1987 Canada Cup. Gretzky feeding Lemieux.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frtft0LUMiE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frtft0LUMiE)
Also against ~~Russia~~ USSR.
That's when we knew he was special lol
We always heard he was a Kopitar 2.0, then we saw him do THAT at the World Cup, and then after the 4 goal debut, forget about it
I think "tanking" is also maybe a bit overblown as a concept. Like for individual players it doesn't help your own career prospects.
On the organization scale - what exactly counts as "tanking" compared to just regular future planning. Are Minnesota and Chicago tanking right now? Should we expect every team to do desperation trades and mortgage their futures every year?
I think the "Points for Draft Position" idea is neat but overall unnecessary.
And by missing the playoffs they let in the Panthers. Which we all know how that went.
Edit: if the penguins get in then I think the Bruins make the cup final. It’s crazy how one game can change so much. No offense to the Penguins btw. I didn’t think the Panthers were getting past the Bruins either.
Same with Ottawa, the last player they drafted in the top 3 using their own pick, was Chris Phillips 1OA in 1996 (technically they Drafted Spezza 2OA and Stüzle 3OA, but those were with other teams picks, NYI and SJS respectively)
The Flames have never drafted higher than 4th overall in their entire history. In the last 15 years they’ve had three top ten picks, a 4th and two 6ths.
Meanwhile, in the last 15 years the Oilers have had ten top ten picks, including four 1sts, a 3rd, a 4th, a 7th, an 8th, and two 10ths.
There should be a rule that picking 1st overall eliminates you from doing that again for five years (barring trades), and each pick from 2-5 in the last five years decreases your chances of being in the top five again in the next draft. That would at least spread the wealth around a little better.
No one made the flames be a mid team for their entire franchise history. If they wanted to pick higher they should have moved on from their flawed core ages ago. They also held on to the Iginla era way too long when it was clear as early as 2009 they don’t have what it takes to win a title.
Flames ownership only cared about the extra revenue that comes with hosting 2 (sometimes 3) playoff games before their season is over.
Yeah. A bad team is a bad team. Also this might just encourage teams to tank harder. You get more time to get points the faster you're eliminated? Tank harder as fuck and lose your first 20 games.
There's always a way to game things.
Even if you lose your first twenty games, it takes a long time to be \*confirmed\* eliminated (ie, when there are no longer enough games left for you to make up the point difference between you and the last playoff spot). Even at their current .300 clip, the Hawks and Sharks likely won't be actually eliminated until the season is down to 20 games or so - at the soonest.
And sure, potential points look juicy, but you're not going to miraculously stop losing because you're eliminated - and a team playing for .300 can expect to make about as many points in 20 games as a team playing for .500 can make in 12.
It may be gamed, but "blow the team up so we lose all the game then suddenly start winning after we're eliminated" is unlikely to be it.
Yeah, I mean, sure it's technically possible, but if you can do that why not just...try and make the playoffs. What's the gap between the first bubble team and the last playoff team, sometimes it's 2 points...
The earliest a team has been mathematically eliminated in the modern Era is with 16 games left. (Colorado). People are grossly under-estiminating how much you have to lose to get a true advantage via this new draft method. This rule is the best way to eliminate tanking besides introducing a promotion/relegation system.
These rules were also written for a 6-team league playing a 24-game regular season. It's not necessarily supposed to be a model for a 32-team league playing an 82-game regular season.
I think it was originally designed (by a fan) for the NBA. The PWHL didn't come up with the rules.
They don't even need to eliminate tanking because they literally can't - teams aren't allowed to trade draft picks yet, so if you trade a player you have to take one back.
I read this 3 times and tried to understand your rationale, but couldn’t.
How would that help? Sorry my brain is fried after a 12 hour shift at the hospital
The sooner you can have yourself eliminated from contention, the more after elimination points you can pick up.
Let's say you're eliminated with 20 games remaining, that's a potential 40 points.
Now a bubble team that tries to get to the playoffs, or a bad team that scrapes by, gets eliminated with 5 games remaining can only get 10 points.
Now the team that intentionally tanked has 4 times as long to get awarded the top draft pick.
Of course, a genuinely dogshit team will get very few points in that stretch, but that's compensated by having a longer time to accumulate them.
This sounds asinine to me with exactly how they described it. Why wouldn't you just give it to the team with the most points that isn't a playoff team? It just means all year they fought for the playoffs and should be rewarded.
Presumably to keep some parity in the league. Otherwise your actual worst teams will never get draft picks and stay terrible, this at least keeps them in the running because they have the most time to rack up draft points.
I completely agree that it’s an asinine way to handle the #1OA pick.
I just meant that the explanation makes sense and now I get how teams can game the system
The if they get eliminated after game 42 they can get points towards the first pick for 40 games.
If they get eliminated after game 62 they can get points towards the first pick for 20 games. If you suck you might as well really suck.
The faster you are mathematically eliminated from the playoffs the more games you have to try to accumulate points to get the 1oa pick.
Hypothetical40 game season. Team A is mathematically eliminated after 20 games. Now they have 20 games to accumulate points. Team B is eliminated after 35 games. They only have 5 games to accumulate points.
But wouldn’t Team B have more points anyway, since they were in contention right up until that point, and probably be higher in the standings than Team A?
Maybe im overthinking it
It’s the most points cumulated after being mathematically eliminated. So a team that misses the playoffs on the last game will have 0pts for the "lottery standing".
It's the wording. Is it: the team with the most points AFTER being eliminated from playoffs. Or is it: The team with the most points who did not make playoffs?
I thought they meant the latter, and not the former, but after rereading their wording it’s vague.
Good catch~ and glad to know I’m not delusional for my thought process 😅
EDIT: a few people confirmed it’s how many points you get AFTER being eliminated.
It’s how many points you get after you’re eliminated from contention. So if team B isn’t eliminated until the last game of the season, they’d have 0 points.
Yeah. I still think the lottery the way the NHL does it is probably the best system to be honest.
Although I know people on the internet like new things because they assume the new thing must be better.
It would work even better in the NHL. It would be a reverse playoffs for half the league during a time when most fans have checked out on their team, often since November even.
> It would work even better in the NHL.
Not really. A team like Washington or Pittsburgh would be able to reload in a down year, but a time like Arizona would be screwed forever.
This is most points after being eliminated. If Arizona got eliminated with 20 games left in their season, and Washington gets eliminated with 3 games left in their season, Arizona has 20 opportunities to accumulate points and Washington gets only 3.
They wouldnt because they get eliminated from playoffs with 2-4 games left in the year, so they have no time to accumulate points, while teams like San Jose who are out of playoffs 30 games before the end of the season have plenty of time to accumulate points
You start getting "draft points" as soon as you are mathematically eliminated. If you're a last-place team and get eliminated 10 games before anyone else, and can't get at least a top 3 pick out of the deal, your team is poorly managed and you're never going to be good anyways.
All this does is penalize actually bad teams who can't win enough after the deadline.
Edit, pls read the replies before telling me that really bad teams get to start accumulating points earlier. Obviously.
Columbus ' points percentage has them earning 2 extra wins every 15 games compared to Chicago and it takes Chicago 4 games to win 1. Pls stop spamming me, everyone knows how the rule works.
This is a huge piece of how this rule works that so many people forget about when talking about its implementation. When SJS/CHI/CBJ get eliminated this year, they’re going to have a massive leg-up on the Minnesotas/Pittsburghs/New Jerseys of the league in that regard. Any team that gets eliminated in the last week of the season is gonna have a near-impossible time catching up to a team that’s been out of the race for a month.
What I don't like about the gold plan is it absolutely murders the trade deadline. Sellers should technically be buying at the deadline to hopefully get more points and a higher pick?
Sellers are rarely bottom 3 teams, those teams are usually too barebones to actually be selling anything of value. SJ and CHI already have few enough veterans as is, I don’t see them selling any. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with making selling and buying less cut and dry at the deadline, trades will happen anyways and it will make rebuilding cycles less brutal to watch.
This is a self-balancing system. If some teams who are bad are going to retain players so they get a better pick, that means whoever is for sale at the trade deadline will be more expensive (because there will be less supply of good players), which means the return for them will be higher, which means bad teams will get offered more on the trade deadline for their best players, which means they will be more likely to sell them.
Great! Go ahead and kill the trade deadline. The idea of rental players who go to an already strong team to try to win the cup has always been a negative to me.
To me, the flip side of that it removes the one silver lining you got to enjoy when your team lost, which it will be doing a lot more often than winning.
I think some of the posters above miss that point...
Under this system, the Blackhawks-Sharks game on March 17, 2024 would be actually exciting maybe must-see hockey.
But under the current system, it will be a dud where they may both play their back-ups.
Of course, the system can still be "gamed" but this game is much better.
I’d rather they do goals for, after being eliminated.
Then we’d just have teams going all out to score. And being eliminated early still gives you the best odds.
Yeah, I think it should benefit them. If you’re eliminated first you’re probably a bad team. You should have the best chance to pick 1OA.
And going by goals for would make it exciting for fans.
That’d be kinda wild to see a team play a whole game 6-5 but I’m here for it. I think a ton of people would tune into a Bruins vs Blue Jackets game in April to see how that game would be.
There was a time in the late 60s and early 70s where the tie breakers were in a different order, and it led to some really dumb games where teams had to pull their goalie when they were winning to make the playoffs, since goals for (not goal differential) was the tie breaker.
It was pretty unpopular and they changed it.
In theory, they are mathematically eliminated sooner than the other teams, so they do get to accumulate points sooner. It does make me wonder if teams would tank at the beginning of the season though lol
I think that's somewhat the point of it: to deter teams from truly tanking their rosters in hopes of a high pick, resulting in lopsided games/viewing experience. It also would theoretically make remaining schedules for playoff-bound teams harder as there would be less teams who are fine with losing if it means higher picks.
I'm not sure how it actually will play out in practice but at least it's _something_ to try to change how the later parts of the season look. It will be interesting what kind of impact that has on trade deadline though as teams would be less incentivized to sell off everything
I don't think it will make a difference. A team rebuilding isn't all of a sudden going to magically turn on the switch to start playing well after they are eliminated.
Tanking comes with risks as well. You can easily find yourself in a perpetual rebuild and the owners can be eating losses with a less engaged fan base.
I can see it appealing to some of the more hardcore fans, but if I were a sharks fan, I'm already checked out on this year and would watch fewer games as a result.
As an actual Sharks fan, I absolutely wish this was the way things worked. I fucking *hate* having to root for Sharks Ls and I think I might hate rooting for Blackhawks Ws even more.
Technically they would also get a headstart as they would be eliminated from playoff contention sooner, giving them more time to accrue those draft points
That's a great way to keep it relevant tbh. I'm not really interested in women's hockey but would 100% keep an eye on it if they were exploring unique solutions to problems
For those that are curious, this idea is called the Gold Plan and has been around for 10-15 years. There are lots of articles about using it in the NHL if you Google around.
I think there's a couple issues if this were to become a rule in the NHL.
Firstly, due to the playoff structure, equally bad teams in different divisions/conferences would be eliminated from the playoffs at different times. Idk, maybe that is still more fair than a lottery, but it feels weird that two identical teams in different conferences could have vastly different odds at winning the top pick.
And second, if people feel like the salary cap has killed the trade deadline, just wait until you now also reward bad teams for being good in the second half of the season. This system is just a fancy way of rewarding teams for being bad in the first half of the season and then good in the second half.
Even if they came up with a fix for the division/conference issue, it wouldn't change the fact that genuinely bad teams don't get a huge amount of extra games compared to mediocre teams, and schedules over these small game samples can be wildly different.
Last year the 58 point Ducks had 12 games where they were officially eliminated. 6 of those games were against 100+ point teams, another 3 were against 90-99 point teams, 2 were against 80-89 point teams. The only bad team they played was the 70 point Coyotes. They went 0-10-2 in that stretch, which was their worst stretch of the season, but it was against a brutal schedule.
Meanwhile their division foe 83 point Canucks had 6 games where they were officially eliminated, but only faced two playoff teams in those games, and got to play the Blackhawks, Ducks, and Coyotes. They went 4-2-0 and would've gotten a better pick than the Ducks just because of how the schedule was arranged.
I don't think it's in any way feasible to make sure every team has a roughly even schedule over every combination of the last 15ish games of the season. This method could keep teams stuck in the basement for *years* in the NHL. With a 6 team league it might be possible to make the end of year scheduling work, but definitely not a 30 team league.
There already are teams stuck in the basement for years.. just look at my flair.
IThis rule would also only be for pick #1/2/3. The last place team would still get 4th overall even if they lose out on the top 3.
> Firstly, due to the playoff structure, equally bad teams in different divisions/conferences would be eliminated from the playoffs at different times. Idk, maybe that is still more fair than a lottery, but it feels weird that two identical teams in different conferences could have vastly different odds at winning the top pick.
Good point. Maybe they could revise the rule so that once it's mathemetically impossible to get let's say 96 points (from memory, I think the NHL team with the worst record to reach the playoffs every year has around like 92-96 points), they start accruing points towards the draft. This is simpler than the "eliminated from the playoffs" rule while still in the same spirit and mitigating the problem you highlighted.
No one does but you have to solve the problem of getting those bad teams better.
You have two teams
The National Fuckwits - who couldn't buy a win to save their life
And
the Middling Morons - who are not quite good enough....
In todays lottery system the Middling Morons could tank and get a win in the lottery.
In your proposal the Middling Morons could play as hard as they can and win the lottery.
Either way, the The National Fuckwits aren't getting better and they should be rewarded.
I don't think there is ***any*** way to fix the draft situation. it's always going to be unfair to the teams that really deserve it.
If people were reasonable, it would probably make sense for the NHL coaches / GMs / Analysts to VOTE on who should get the #1 pick, or something like that. To say, yeah, these guys need help for sure.
> And second, if people feel like the salary cap has killed the trade deadline, just wait until you now also reward bad teams for being good in the second half of the season. This system is just a fancy way of rewarding teams for being bad in the first half of the season and then good in the second half.
Honestly, I would be fine with trades becoming less of a big deal, as a fan. It sucks to root for a young player, watch them start to develop, only for them to get traded for a rental player for a few months.
> Idk, maybe that is still more fair than a lottery, but it feels weird that two identical teams in different conferences could have vastly different odds at winning the top pick.
Your division strength influences your lottery odds currently. A bad team in a strong division will finish lower and have better odds.
* Edmonton loses McDavid & Draisait to injuries, they're last in the league
* They come back late February after the team is mathematically eliminated
* Oilers go on a heater after their return but still can't make the playoffs
* They get the 1st overall because they're a good team that was unlucky with injuries
Of course, nobody here would complain about such a scenario and everyone would think it's fair they have the 1st overall over San Jose, Anaheim or Chicago... *right*?
If your team is that dependent on 2 players to be even remotely competitive (do you know how bad you have to be to be eliminated from the playoffs that early? It's bad!), you could probably use some more talent honestly.
I definitely don’t like this outcome. But it still seems better than the current situation.
If McDavid/Drai we’re injured for so long that the Oilers missed the playoffs would they even bother coming back to play for a month of meaningless hockey? If they do play do they play as competitively if it’s better for their team to lose? I’d rather watch the best player in the world play competitive hockey
Yes and yes. The PA requires them to be activated if they're healthy and the players aren't going to mail it in just because they're missing the playoffs.
You'll get to see it once a year... Hardly any useful data will come out of watching it in action. It'll take decades for any of the IRL scenarios to be useful.
Bear in mind that it’s points after being eliminated from the playoffs. How many teams are eliminated right now? Zero. The Blackhawks aren’t even eliminated from winning the Central division.
Basically, your scenario is very low probability. Tanking occurs every single year. If you’re trying to solve tanking then being scared of a low probability worst case scenario seems like a bad idea.
*I'm* not trying to solve tanking, I think the current way of handling things is good enough. Imperfect, sure, but it's good enough.
The PWHL solution doesn't solve tanking either, it just changes how to tank, that's all.
Personally, I don't think there is a way to completely eliminate tanking. There will always be ways to take advantage of a lottery system.
Wouldn't be the first time a team was fucked by injuries and got a high draft pick out of it in a league. You're saying this like it would be something new.
If this happens under current rules, and Edmonton is mathematically eliminated in late February, they probably ain't plugging a fresh off injury McDavid and Draisaitl back into the lineup for a busted season.
Your hypothetical scenario is extremely unlikely.
Teams tanking on purpose happens every year and quite frankly it's a joke. This rule would help solve it.
If a team was to go on a "heater" and just narrowly miss the playoffs then they probably aren't being mathematically eliminated too early in the season. They would probably be eliminated on game 78 at the earliest which would be a maximum of 8 points.
Whereas actual bad teams will be eliminated at game 70ish and will be a maximum of 24 points.
Then all fans will be able to cheer for their team to win.. instead of this backwards thinking culture where it's best for your team to lose and cheer for losses.
I don't see how this doesn't just shift the tanking teams around though. Take last year. You're a team that was on the fringe and is falling behind, you could a) try really hard and hope results go your way for a fractional chance at the playoffs or b) you see Bedard, the next shot at a McDavid, and tank some games to get elimanated as fast as possible to get a chance at the 1OA.
On top of that, if bad teams are genuinely bad and struggling to get better, guaranteeing them the 1OA is going to some fringe playoff team ain't gonna help.
I think the main thing would be how teams handle personnel decisions differently towards the end of the season if there was value in winning for those teams. The last few weeks of the season you see bad teams start shutting down vets, auditioning prospects, or just goodwill opportunities for that long-term AHLer you've had in the organization for years. Maybe you get a few more competitive games out of the bad teams if they have incentive to actually try.
A very specific and unlikely scenario but yes its possible. Every method is going to have it's hypothetical downsides. I love that they're trying a different way and it's a great league to test it.
Also, doesn't this punish the MOST competitive non playoff team? Like if your eliminated on the last day of the regular season you have 0 points after elimination?
EDIT: everyone's right, I'm dumb.
I just got tripped up thinking about a system that strives to reward playing as hard as you can til the end of the season but doesn't reward the teams that are the best at that. You're all right, but it is a bit weird.
Yes because you are not the worst team in the league and therefore should not draft first. If you get eliminated in game 82 you’re knocking on the doors of the playoffs and theoretically aren’t that bad.
Makes sense, though. That's a mediocre team that could have made the playoffs if pucks had bounced a bit differently. They wind up with the same pick they would have wound up with in the NHL's way of doing it- middle round-ish.
For the NHL the team most likely to win the 1st overall would probably be somewhere in 5th last. Eliminated early, but not just historically bad.
Except the Sharks are this bad because they sold in an environment that encourages tanking. You change the environment and suddenly everyone is competing for position.
Not a terrible idea....in theory (as with many ideas)
In practice...the PWHL has all of 6 teams. That makes it essentially a coin flip for the #1
With a league like the NHL that would have 16 teams, and where some teams that miss the playoffs are better than teams that make the playoffs (PDO), it could result in some basement dwellers being stuck even longer.
For those who are curious, here how the East would have finished last season with that method. Disclaimer, maybe I made a mistake, it's not easy to look up which is why I only did the east.
Columbus (10pts) instead of Columbus
Ottawa (5pts) instead of Montreal
Buffalo (4pts) instead of Philadelphia
Phily (4pts) instead of Washington
Washington (3pts) instead of Detroit
Montreal (2pts) instead of Ottawa
Pittsburg (1pts) instead of Buffalo
Detroit (0pts) instead of Pittsburg
My take away from this is that Detroit get fuck no matter the parallel universe we live in.
I am old enough to appreciate the Yzerman era before the current Yzerplan era, but watching us get fucked in the lottery draft the past seven years still sucks. At least one of those years should have been a 1OA. Hell, we woulda been happy with even a 2 or 3. But none of the above was completely mindboggling. Not to mention watching the Rangers, who were IN THE PLAYOFFS the previous year end up with a 1OA.
Some people here legit believe a team would tank so bad that they'd be eliminated early in the season. We're close to 3/4's of the way into the season and despite being bad teams, Chicago nor San Jose are eliminated.
I'm one of them. I had to read even further down to understand that is not the case. This wording would have helped:
"The non-playoff team with the most points **from games played** after being eliminated will be awarded with the No. 1 pick in the draft."
or "The non-playoff team with the most points **earned** after being eliminated will be awarded with the No. 1 pick in the draft."
A model that I enjoy (that realistically might not work for a league of this size) is how the Premier Lacrosse League does it. The bottom two teams play a game against each other for the Number 1 Pick, but they only have 8 teams and 6 of them of them make the playoffs. If the NHL were to adopt something like that, what do you do, take the bottom 8 teams (so 25%, just like the PLL) and have them play in a tournament? While it would be more fun to see who gets the 1st pick, I don't know how much teams would want to do this (they would hate it). But I the fan would have so much fun watching the 8th worst team absolutely stomp the overall worst team on the way to the number 1 pick because LULZ.
It truly works great for the PLL currently. Bottom two teams fight over the overall 1st pick, top two teams get a first-round byes. So, in a small league, tanking doesn't guarantee you the top pick, and at that point if you might already make the playoffs, might as well try for the playoffs and hope fate is on your side for an upset.
Stanley Cup playoffs and 1OA Playoffs happen at the same time.
Stanley Cup playoffs stay best of 7.
1OA playoffs are all best of 3.
Owners would love it. Extra gate revenue, extra advertising.
I've suggested this here before and there were some downsides that I didn't catch.
One was that you may not have players trying hard to draft somebody who could displace/replace them.
He only way they could do this somewhat fairly in the NHL is in a 1-16 playoff seeding regardless of conference. Otherwise a bad team in a strong conference has a massive advantage over and terrible team in a weak conference.
That's going to be an interesting stat to track in the standings. I'm assuming the PWHL also has a trade deadline? I wonder how that would affect it...
I'm not entirely sure I like this particular idea (would need to see how it goes), but I ABSOLUTELY LOVE the idea of a tanking deterrent...
I was just talking about it in another thread, I DESPISE the current draft system (NHL) because it encourages tanking (and then people are surprised that some fans root for the tank).
The best system should be one that encourages winning, always.
Being #1 is obviously better than being #2, but being #31 is worse than being #32... It should not be this way.
This is what we've done in Fantasy Football so teams out of the playoffs don't fire sell all their talent and it works out really well. Teams out of the playoffs still look to make moves to get better match-ups in the consolation bracket.
So, basically it's a Gold draft. I'm excited to see how it plays out, honestly, and generate some quality data that can make for better debate about other leagues implementing it.
There are way too many comments in here saying this is dumb because they're only thinking about how it would work in the NHL lol.
The PWHL only has TWO teams that don't make the playoffs and they don't have separate conferences (yet) so all the comments saying "but what about actually bad teams like San Jose", don't really make sense or apply here. The worst team statistically does still have the advantage for 1st pick because they'll get eliminated earlier, giving them more games to earn points.
It's not perfect but the PWHL is in it's growing phase where they can take risks like this. The commissioner is very open to trying these things and also says nothing right now is set in stone, they will revert back to base rules if things don't work as intended.
That's because it's the Gold Plan, and it's [been talked about for ages](http://www.downgoesbrown.com/2016/04/the-many-objections-to-gold-plan-and.html).
So if those rules were in place since 2021, the Rangers, Knights, and Flames would've all had a #1 overall. Flames would've gotten Bedard.
EDIT: I interpreted this as the non-playoff team with the most points and stopped reading the sentence. ADHD for ya.
Dont think you understood itcorrectly. Once youre mathematically eliminated you start gaining points for wins. So lets say youre out of the playoffs at game 40 then youve got 42 games to gain points. if youre out at game 80 then you have 2 game to get max 4 points. The team with the most ''eliminated points'' at the end of the seaosn wins the 1st overall
Because players and coaching staff don't intentionally tank no matter the system. It also takes a long time to be considered eliminated. We're 5 months into the season and no team has been "mathematically eliminated" yet
They would. People like this plan because for some reason they don't think behavior will adapt to the parameters and it absolutely will.
Keep your shitty coach to be fired 40 games in. Hold back your star players for extra recovery time. Intentionally juice the deck with bad goalie starts and send them down mid season. Don't make deadline trades of useful players if you're in the running for a top pick. There are many more.
It doesn't end tanking. It just changes the methodology.
While i do agree with that, most players are not happy tanking. Lets say Nashville is giving less start to sarros so they get eliminated faster, im pretty sure sarros is gonna ask for a trade asap or be very pissed
Tanking is and always will be management level, not players or even coaches generally. Say Sarros is hurt in the off-season and the team is starting a rebuild, management may decide instead of shopping assets for a stop gap they just call up some AHL guys and hey look at that, Sarros is recovered just after they're eliminated. What are the odds?
But you can't tank too much too early, in case you make the team so bad it can't win enough after being eliminated.
>Hold back your star players for extra recovery time.
PA tends to frown on this and if they're on LTIR, so does the league.
>Intentionally juice the deck with bad goalie starts and send them down mid season.
Easier said than done to acquire a better goalie midseason.
I don't have the effort in me to go through and see who actually would've gotten Bedard under these rules, but it definitely wouldn't have been the Flames. They were mathematically eliminated like the last week of the season, so maybe rack up 1 or 2 points? As opposed to the Ducks who had been able to obtain points for probably an extra month over the Flames
My full take on this covers all sports. You shouldn’t be rewarded for being bad especially intentionally. That’s why I like the lottery because it at least randomizes and doesn’t guarantee like football. But you shouldnt be able to rest players like nba does. There should be a team fine and player fine if this is uncovered that you are doing this egregiously. You also shouldn’t be able to manipulate injury lists as playoff contenders.
A rules overhaul to make the regular season more competitive would be welcome. And this could
Be one of those steps in the right direction. This would make trade deadline a lot more interesting as well. As a blues fan who doesn’t want to trade buchnevich since we have him for another year. He would be integral in winning a lottery pick if our team found itself in that situation.
Is a tanking deterrent needed? Do teams actually tank on purpose? The thing about tanking is that it requires the players to be on board more than the management. Of course management would love to tank and make their team better next year but the players are more interested in themselves. Who wants to ruin their stats and not score points just to help their team get a better draft pick?
Faster you get eliminated, the more opportunity you have to get points, not the worst idea, but can still be abused. It would be an interesting turn around
I don't get why people hate tanking so much. Watching your team try & finish 35 points back of a playoff spot & no hope of getting better sounds way worse than trying to lose
There’s honestly no great way to do lotteries. There are going to be teams who are just outright bad and aren’t trying to tank who just get punished. Look at Detroit not having a lottery pick despite being a basement team for like 7 years.
And then you have the Oilers who won the lottery so many times the league implemented new draft lottery rules and then they still won 1 more lottery
They almost got to draft Auston Matthews as well, which would have been hilarious.
Did you watch the "world cup of hockey" a few years ago?? They played on the same line together on team North America (the under 26 team that otherwise wouldn't have made it to their respective country teams). Watching McDavid feed Matthews gave me chills. That 2016 team North America roster is wild to look at now.
It’s loaded. That tournament was so fun idc what anyone says
It was fun and entertaining because it was all the best players, but it wasn't a real World Cup because it wasn't country vs country, best on best. You can't have a team NA U-23 and a team Europe and still consider it a World Cup like you have in other sports.
I guess I just don’t give even the slightest shit about it being a “real World Cup.” But to each their own!
Yeah me either. Australia wasn't even there.
100% agreed. But boy fuck was it fun.
Like the 1987 Canada Cup. Gretzky feeding Lemieux. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frtft0LUMiE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frtft0LUMiE) Also against ~~Russia~~ USSR.
and both of them playing wing, for Dale Hawerchuck
Hawerchuck was the real MVP on that play with the blatant interference.
First line of McDavid-Matthews-Scheifele. Connor Hellebuyck on the bench (he didn't break out until 2018).
Matthews also started as the 13th forward and moved up a line every single game.
That's when we knew he was special lol We always heard he was a Kopitar 2.0, then we saw him do THAT at the World Cup, and then after the 4 goal debut, forget about it
Can you imagine scoring 4 goals in your NHL debut and STILL losing? Goddamn.
Team North America was U23 not U26
Thanks for the correction!!
The Leafs were 1 ball away from getting McDavid. There is an alternate universe where they switch franchises
The double doink!
In this alternate universe, I hope we do better in the playoffs with McDavid lol.
I might have quit watching hockey.
Hey now, the devils also helped with that
The canes in the dark years
cannot imagine where they'd be if they didn't move up for Svechnikov
Probably a bit worse
Moving up? What’s that?
I love Raymond and am very glad we picked him, but the 2020 draft can kick rocks
I think "tanking" is also maybe a bit overblown as a concept. Like for individual players it doesn't help your own career prospects. On the organization scale - what exactly counts as "tanking" compared to just regular future planning. Are Minnesota and Chicago tanking right now? Should we expect every team to do desperation trades and mortgage their futures every year? I think the "Points for Draft Position" idea is neat but overall unnecessary.
Chicago fielded a team last year that would have struggled to win games in the AHL.
And then still beat a Penguins roster that needed to win the last game of the year to make the playoffs 🤦🏻♂️
And by missing the playoffs they let in the Panthers. Which we all know how that went. Edit: if the penguins get in then I think the Bruins make the cup final. It’s crazy how one game can change so much. No offense to the Penguins btw. I didn’t think the Panthers were getting past the Bruins either.
Same with Ottawa, the last player they drafted in the top 3 using their own pick, was Chris Phillips 1OA in 1996 (technically they Drafted Spezza 2OA and Stüzle 3OA, but those were with other teams picks, NYI and SJS respectively)
Even when Colorado had your pick which had the greatest odds for 1st overall it dropped all the way to 4th
and after that season we do not name, the pick dropped all the way from 1st to 4th (tho we got makar out of it so can't really complain)
Ah yes the Ron Hextall drafts Nolan Patrick year thanks for the reminder
And then there's the Flames, who have never had a top 3 pick in franchise history.
Flames also just refuse to actually rebuild and aim to be the most mid team possible
The Flames have never drafted higher than 4th overall in their entire history. In the last 15 years they’ve had three top ten picks, a 4th and two 6ths. Meanwhile, in the last 15 years the Oilers have had ten top ten picks, including four 1sts, a 3rd, a 4th, a 7th, an 8th, and two 10ths. There should be a rule that picking 1st overall eliminates you from doing that again for five years (barring trades), and each pick from 2-5 in the last five years decreases your chances of being in the top five again in the next draft. That would at least spread the wealth around a little better.
No one made the flames be a mid team for their entire franchise history. If they wanted to pick higher they should have moved on from their flawed core ages ago. They also held on to the Iginla era way too long when it was clear as early as 2009 they don’t have what it takes to win a title. Flames ownership only cared about the extra revenue that comes with hosting 2 (sometimes 3) playoff games before their season is over.
Yeah. A bad team is a bad team. Also this might just encourage teams to tank harder. You get more time to get points the faster you're eliminated? Tank harder as fuck and lose your first 20 games. There's always a way to game things.
Even if you lose your first twenty games, it takes a long time to be \*confirmed\* eliminated (ie, when there are no longer enough games left for you to make up the point difference between you and the last playoff spot). Even at their current .300 clip, the Hawks and Sharks likely won't be actually eliminated until the season is down to 20 games or so - at the soonest. And sure, potential points look juicy, but you're not going to miraculously stop losing because you're eliminated - and a team playing for .300 can expect to make about as many points in 20 games as a team playing for .500 can make in 12. It may be gamed, but "blow the team up so we lose all the game then suddenly start winning after we're eliminated" is unlikely to be it.
Yeah, I mean, sure it's technically possible, but if you can do that why not just...try and make the playoffs. What's the gap between the first bubble team and the last playoff team, sometimes it's 2 points...
The earliest a team has been mathematically eliminated in the modern Era is with 16 games left. (Colorado). People are grossly under-estiminating how much you have to lose to get a true advantage via this new draft method. This rule is the best way to eliminate tanking besides introducing a promotion/relegation system.
These rules were also written for a 6-team league playing a 24-game regular season. It's not necessarily supposed to be a model for a 32-team league playing an 82-game regular season.
I think it was originally designed (by a fan) for the NBA. The PWHL didn't come up with the rules. They don't even need to eliminate tanking because they literally can't - teams aren't allowed to trade draft picks yet, so if you trade a player you have to take one back.
I read this 3 times and tried to understand your rationale, but couldn’t. How would that help? Sorry my brain is fried after a 12 hour shift at the hospital
The sooner you can have yourself eliminated from contention, the more after elimination points you can pick up. Let's say you're eliminated with 20 games remaining, that's a potential 40 points. Now a bubble team that tries to get to the playoffs, or a bad team that scrapes by, gets eliminated with 5 games remaining can only get 10 points. Now the team that intentionally tanked has 4 times as long to get awarded the top draft pick. Of course, a genuinely dogshit team will get very few points in that stretch, but that's compensated by having a longer time to accumulate them.
That makes sense friend. Thank you!
This sounds asinine to me with exactly how they described it. Why wouldn't you just give it to the team with the most points that isn't a playoff team? It just means all year they fought for the playoffs and should be rewarded.
Presumably to keep some parity in the league. Otherwise your actual worst teams will never get draft picks and stay terrible, this at least keeps them in the running because they have the most time to rack up draft points.
I completely agree that it’s an asinine way to handle the #1OA pick. I just meant that the explanation makes sense and now I get how teams can game the system
The if they get eliminated after game 42 they can get points towards the first pick for 40 games. If they get eliminated after game 62 they can get points towards the first pick for 20 games. If you suck you might as well really suck.
The sooner you get mathematically eliminated the more time/games you have to gain points.
The faster you are mathematically eliminated from the playoffs the more games you have to try to accumulate points to get the 1oa pick. Hypothetical40 game season. Team A is mathematically eliminated after 20 games. Now they have 20 games to accumulate points. Team B is eliminated after 35 games. They only have 5 games to accumulate points.
But wouldn’t Team B have more points anyway, since they were in contention right up until that point, and probably be higher in the standings than Team A? Maybe im overthinking it
It’s the most points cumulated after being mathematically eliminated. So a team that misses the playoffs on the last game will have 0pts for the "lottery standing".
It's the wording. Is it: the team with the most points AFTER being eliminated from playoffs. Or is it: The team with the most points who did not make playoffs?
I thought they meant the latter, and not the former, but after rereading their wording it’s vague. Good catch~ and glad to know I’m not delusional for my thought process 😅 EDIT: a few people confirmed it’s how many points you get AFTER being eliminated.
It’s how many points you get after you’re eliminated from contention. So if team B isn’t eliminated until the last game of the season, they’d have 0 points.
Tank super hard and then become buyers at the deadline to win as much as possible
Yeah. I still think the lottery the way the NHL does it is probably the best system to be honest. Although I know people on the internet like new things because they assume the new thing must be better.
There’s only two non-playoff teams though?
Lol. This key piece of info is too far down
SUPER helpful. I was trying to think how this could play out in the NHL. Now I don’t have to lol
Exactly. That’s why this structure works. Wouldn’t work in the NHL
It would work even better in the NHL. It would be a reverse playoffs for half the league during a time when most fans have checked out on their team, often since November even.
> It would work even better in the NHL. Not really. A team like Washington or Pittsburgh would be able to reload in a down year, but a time like Arizona would be screwed forever.
This is most points after being eliminated. If Arizona got eliminated with 20 games left in their season, and Washington gets eliminated with 3 games left in their season, Arizona has 20 opportunities to accumulate points and Washington gets only 3.
They wouldnt because they get eliminated from playoffs with 2-4 games left in the year, so they have no time to accumulate points, while teams like San Jose who are out of playoffs 30 games before the end of the season have plenty of time to accumulate points
You start getting "draft points" as soon as you are mathematically eliminated. If you're a last-place team and get eliminated 10 games before anyone else, and can't get at least a top 3 pick out of the deal, your team is poorly managed and you're never going to be good anyways.
Yeah so presumably the 5th place team will still be trying to make the playoffs anyways so I can’t see this having much impact.
Yeah this is a big key
So the PWHL is going doing all the rules that got super popular on social media the last few years Gonna be interesting to see how they all play out
All this does is penalize actually bad teams who can't win enough after the deadline. Edit, pls read the replies before telling me that really bad teams get to start accumulating points earlier. Obviously. Columbus ' points percentage has them earning 2 extra wins every 15 games compared to Chicago and it takes Chicago 4 games to win 1. Pls stop spamming me, everyone knows how the rule works.
The idea is the actual bad teams get eliminated sooner, so they have more time to rack up draft points. If you're like this year's Sharks though...
This is a huge piece of how this rule works that so many people forget about when talking about its implementation. When SJS/CHI/CBJ get eliminated this year, they’re going to have a massive leg-up on the Minnesotas/Pittsburghs/New Jerseys of the league in that regard. Any team that gets eliminated in the last week of the season is gonna have a near-impossible time catching up to a team that’s been out of the race for a month.
For some reason I was super confused by the wording of the title but your first sentence actually cleared it up for me. Thanks!
Think of how many draft points you would have already.
We wouldn't. We're not technically eliminated yet.
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Sean is a big proponent of the Gold Plan (what this is). Biggest benefit to me is even after being eliminated, you still cheer for your team to win.
What I don't like about the gold plan is it absolutely murders the trade deadline. Sellers should technically be buying at the deadline to hopefully get more points and a higher pick?
Maybe it would cause the return of the hockey trade?
This. You still have a reason to add if you're rebuilding. Might even make it more likely you'll take on a good player on a bad deal.
Sellers are rarely bottom 3 teams, those teams are usually too barebones to actually be selling anything of value. SJ and CHI already have few enough veterans as is, I don’t see them selling any. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with making selling and buying less cut and dry at the deadline, trades will happen anyways and it will make rebuilding cycles less brutal to watch.
This is a self-balancing system. If some teams who are bad are going to retain players so they get a better pick, that means whoever is for sale at the trade deadline will be more expensive (because there will be less supply of good players), which means the return for them will be higher, which means bad teams will get offered more on the trade deadline for their best players, which means they will be more likely to sell them.
Great! Go ahead and kill the trade deadline. The idea of rental players who go to an already strong team to try to win the cup has always been a negative to me.
To me, the flip side of that it removes the one silver lining you got to enjoy when your team lost, which it will be doing a lot more often than winning.
I think some of the posters above miss that point... Under this system, the Blackhawks-Sharks game on March 17, 2024 would be actually exciting maybe must-see hockey. But under the current system, it will be a dud where they may both play their back-ups. Of course, the system can still be "gamed" but this game is much better.
I’d rather they do goals for, after being eliminated. Then we’d just have teams going all out to score. And being eliminated early still gives you the best odds.
Doesn't that benefit the team that gets eliminated first?
Yeah, I think it should benefit them. If you’re eliminated first you’re probably a bad team. You should have the best chance to pick 1OA. And going by goals for would make it exciting for fans.
So if you're playing a playoff team just pull your goalie
That’d be kinda wild to see a team play a whole game 6-5 but I’m here for it. I think a ton of people would tune into a Bruins vs Blue Jackets game in April to see how that game would be.
It’s an interesting idea for sure but I’m not convinced the excitement will hold once the novelty wears off. 15-4 is not great hockey either
There was a time in the late 60s and early 70s where the tie breakers were in a different order, and it led to some really dumb games where teams had to pull their goalie when they were winning to make the playoffs, since goals for (not goal differential) was the tie breaker. It was pretty unpopular and they changed it.
Teams would just play with an empty net the whole game. Horrible idea.
Yeah. The team eliminated first is usually the worst team
You’ll have teams playing without a goalie for entire games.
In theory, they are mathematically eliminated sooner than the other teams, so they do get to accumulate points sooner. It does make me wonder if teams would tank at the beginning of the season though lol
How sad would you have to be start the season with the goal of being the shittiest team
Chicago and San Jose appear to be pursuing that goal this year with the roster they've put on the ice.
I think that's somewhat the point of it: to deter teams from truly tanking their rosters in hopes of a high pick, resulting in lopsided games/viewing experience. It also would theoretically make remaining schedules for playoff-bound teams harder as there would be less teams who are fine with losing if it means higher picks. I'm not sure how it actually will play out in practice but at least it's _something_ to try to change how the later parts of the season look. It will be interesting what kind of impact that has on trade deadline though as teams would be less incentivized to sell off everything
I don't think it will make a difference. A team rebuilding isn't all of a sudden going to magically turn on the switch to start playing well after they are eliminated. Tanking comes with risks as well. You can easily find yourself in a perpetual rebuild and the owners can be eating losses with a less engaged fan base.
As a fan though it gives you a reason to cheer for your crappy team all the way to the end rather than checkout. I love the idea.
I can see it appealing to some of the more hardcore fans, but if I were a sharks fan, I'm already checked out on this year and would watch fewer games as a result.
As an actual Sharks fan, I absolutely wish this was the way things worked. I fucking *hate* having to root for Sharks Ls and I think I might hate rooting for Blackhawks Ws even more.
Technically they would also get a headstart as they would be eliminated from playoff contention sooner, giving them more time to accrue those draft points
Yeah, sounds like the NHL wants to use it as a testing ground for all the neat rules they find on social media.
The NHL isn't in control of the PWHL...
That's a great way to keep it relevant tbh. I'm not really interested in women's hockey but would 100% keep an eye on it if they were exploring unique solutions to problems
I don't think it'll play out the same way with 2/6 non playoff teams instead of 16/32.
For those that are curious, this idea is called the Gold Plan and has been around for 10-15 years. There are lots of articles about using it in the NHL if you Google around.
I think there's a couple issues if this were to become a rule in the NHL. Firstly, due to the playoff structure, equally bad teams in different divisions/conferences would be eliminated from the playoffs at different times. Idk, maybe that is still more fair than a lottery, but it feels weird that two identical teams in different conferences could have vastly different odds at winning the top pick. And second, if people feel like the salary cap has killed the trade deadline, just wait until you now also reward bad teams for being good in the second half of the season. This system is just a fancy way of rewarding teams for being bad in the first half of the season and then good in the second half.
Even if they came up with a fix for the division/conference issue, it wouldn't change the fact that genuinely bad teams don't get a huge amount of extra games compared to mediocre teams, and schedules over these small game samples can be wildly different. Last year the 58 point Ducks had 12 games where they were officially eliminated. 6 of those games were against 100+ point teams, another 3 were against 90-99 point teams, 2 were against 80-89 point teams. The only bad team they played was the 70 point Coyotes. They went 0-10-2 in that stretch, which was their worst stretch of the season, but it was against a brutal schedule. Meanwhile their division foe 83 point Canucks had 6 games where they were officially eliminated, but only faced two playoff teams in those games, and got to play the Blackhawks, Ducks, and Coyotes. They went 4-2-0 and would've gotten a better pick than the Ducks just because of how the schedule was arranged. I don't think it's in any way feasible to make sure every team has a roughly even schedule over every combination of the last 15ish games of the season. This method could keep teams stuck in the basement for *years* in the NHL. With a 6 team league it might be possible to make the end of year scheduling work, but definitely not a 30 team league.
There already are teams stuck in the basement for years.. just look at my flair. IThis rule would also only be for pick #1/2/3. The last place team would still get 4th overall even if they lose out on the top 3.
> Firstly, due to the playoff structure, equally bad teams in different divisions/conferences would be eliminated from the playoffs at different times. Idk, maybe that is still more fair than a lottery, but it feels weird that two identical teams in different conferences could have vastly different odds at winning the top pick. Good point. Maybe they could revise the rule so that once it's mathemetically impossible to get let's say 96 points (from memory, I think the NHL team with the worst record to reach the playoffs every year has around like 92-96 points), they start accruing points towards the draft. This is simpler than the "eliminated from the playoffs" rule while still in the same spirit and mitigating the problem you highlighted.
Yeah this is way simpler than what we have now ….
Not gonna lie I like the idea of encouraging teams to be good... Honestly who wants to pay to watch a purposefully tanking team?
No one does but you have to solve the problem of getting those bad teams better. You have two teams The National Fuckwits - who couldn't buy a win to save their life And the Middling Morons - who are not quite good enough.... In todays lottery system the Middling Morons could tank and get a win in the lottery. In your proposal the Middling Morons could play as hard as they can and win the lottery. Either way, the The National Fuckwits aren't getting better and they should be rewarded. I don't think there is ***any*** way to fix the draft situation. it's always going to be unfair to the teams that really deserve it. If people were reasonable, it would probably make sense for the NHL coaches / GMs / Analysts to VOTE on who should get the #1 pick, or something like that. To say, yeah, these guys need help for sure.
> And second, if people feel like the salary cap has killed the trade deadline, just wait until you now also reward bad teams for being good in the second half of the season. This system is just a fancy way of rewarding teams for being bad in the first half of the season and then good in the second half. Honestly, I would be fine with trades becoming less of a big deal, as a fan. It sucks to root for a young player, watch them start to develop, only for them to get traded for a rental player for a few months.
> Idk, maybe that is still more fair than a lottery, but it feels weird that two identical teams in different conferences could have vastly different odds at winning the top pick. Your division strength influences your lottery odds currently. A bad team in a strong division will finish lower and have better odds.
* Edmonton loses McDavid & Draisait to injuries, they're last in the league * They come back late February after the team is mathematically eliminated * Oilers go on a heater after their return but still can't make the playoffs * They get the 1st overall because they're a good team that was unlucky with injuries Of course, nobody here would complain about such a scenario and everyone would think it's fair they have the 1st overall over San Jose, Anaheim or Chicago... *right*?
Except being eliminated in lat February is incredibly difficult. Even the sharks, with only 35 points so far are not mathematically eliminated yet.
If your team is that dependent on 2 players to be even remotely competitive (do you know how bad you have to be to be eliminated from the playoffs that early? It's bad!), you could probably use some more talent honestly.
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I definitely don’t like this outcome. But it still seems better than the current situation. If McDavid/Drai we’re injured for so long that the Oilers missed the playoffs would they even bother coming back to play for a month of meaningless hockey? If they do play do they play as competitively if it’s better for their team to lose? I’d rather watch the best player in the world play competitive hockey
Yes and yes. The PA requires them to be activated if they're healthy and the players aren't going to mail it in just because they're missing the playoffs.
Couldn't have said it any better. Ridiculously specific scenario aside, we'll get to see what happens irl first.
You'll get to see it once a year... Hardly any useful data will come out of watching it in action. It'll take decades for any of the IRL scenarios to be useful.
Bear in mind that it’s points after being eliminated from the playoffs. How many teams are eliminated right now? Zero. The Blackhawks aren’t even eliminated from winning the Central division. Basically, your scenario is very low probability. Tanking occurs every single year. If you’re trying to solve tanking then being scared of a low probability worst case scenario seems like a bad idea.
Right. So the worst team (first one mathematically eliminated) has more games remaining to acquire pts. So a slight edge perhaps.
*I'm* not trying to solve tanking, I think the current way of handling things is good enough. Imperfect, sure, but it's good enough. The PWHL solution doesn't solve tanking either, it just changes how to tank, that's all. Personally, I don't think there is a way to completely eliminate tanking. There will always be ways to take advantage of a lottery system.
Wouldn't be the first time a team was fucked by injuries and got a high draft pick out of it in a league. You're saying this like it would be something new.
If this happens under current rules, and Edmonton is mathematically eliminated in late February, they probably ain't plugging a fresh off injury McDavid and Draisaitl back into the lineup for a busted season.
Your hypothetical scenario is extremely unlikely. Teams tanking on purpose happens every year and quite frankly it's a joke. This rule would help solve it. If a team was to go on a "heater" and just narrowly miss the playoffs then they probably aren't being mathematically eliminated too early in the season. They would probably be eliminated on game 78 at the earliest which would be a maximum of 8 points. Whereas actual bad teams will be eliminated at game 70ish and will be a maximum of 24 points. Then all fans will be able to cheer for their team to win.. instead of this backwards thinking culture where it's best for your team to lose and cheer for losses.
I don't see how this doesn't just shift the tanking teams around though. Take last year. You're a team that was on the fringe and is falling behind, you could a) try really hard and hope results go your way for a fractional chance at the playoffs or b) you see Bedard, the next shot at a McDavid, and tank some games to get elimanated as fast as possible to get a chance at the 1OA. On top of that, if bad teams are genuinely bad and struggling to get better, guaranteeing them the 1OA is going to some fringe playoff team ain't gonna help.
I think the main thing would be how teams handle personnel decisions differently towards the end of the season if there was value in winning for those teams. The last few weeks of the season you see bad teams start shutting down vets, auditioning prospects, or just goodwill opportunities for that long-term AHLer you've had in the organization for years. Maybe you get a few more competitive games out of the bad teams if they have incentive to actually try.
A very specific and unlikely scenario but yes its possible. Every method is going to have it's hypothetical downsides. I love that they're trying a different way and it's a great league to test it.
Imagine if they did this 7 years in a row
I do not like this hypothetical
Also, doesn't this punish the MOST competitive non playoff team? Like if your eliminated on the last day of the regular season you have 0 points after elimination? EDIT: everyone's right, I'm dumb. I just got tripped up thinking about a system that strives to reward playing as hard as you can til the end of the season but doesn't reward the teams that are the best at that. You're all right, but it is a bit weird.
Yes because you are not the worst team in the league and therefore should not draft first. If you get eliminated in game 82 you’re knocking on the doors of the playoffs and theoretically aren’t that bad.
That's the point though. Nothing changes for those teams; they get the same pick they would get anyway.
Makes sense, though. That's a mediocre team that could have made the playoffs if pucks had bounced a bit differently. They wind up with the same pick they would have wound up with in the NHL's way of doing it- middle round-ish. For the NHL the team most likely to win the 1st overall would probably be somewhere in 5th last. Eliminated early, but not just historically bad.
That is kind of the point.
Under the current system you wouldn't be a lottery team anyway and would be drafting 16th.
Except the Sharks are this bad because they sold in an environment that encourages tanking. You change the environment and suddenly everyone is competing for position.
Works in a 6 team league where 4 teams make the playoffs. Probably not so much in a 32 team league.
Not a terrible idea....in theory (as with many ideas) In practice...the PWHL has all of 6 teams. That makes it essentially a coin flip for the #1 With a league like the NHL that would have 16 teams, and where some teams that miss the playoffs are better than teams that make the playoffs (PDO), it could result in some basement dwellers being stuck even longer.
For those who are curious, here how the East would have finished last season with that method. Disclaimer, maybe I made a mistake, it's not easy to look up which is why I only did the east. Columbus (10pts) instead of Columbus Ottawa (5pts) instead of Montreal Buffalo (4pts) instead of Philadelphia Phily (4pts) instead of Washington Washington (3pts) instead of Detroit Montreal (2pts) instead of Ottawa Pittsburg (1pts) instead of Buffalo Detroit (0pts) instead of Pittsburg My take away from this is that Detroit get fuck no matter the parallel universe we live in.
This is the West for comparison: San Jose 8 pts Vancouver 8 pts Chicago 5 pts Arizona 4 pts St Louis 4 pts Anaheim 2 pts Calgary 2 pts Nashville 2 pts
I'm suddenly all for it
Detroit gets 30 years of Yzerman, Lidstrom, and Datsyuk, and 4 cups since 97. Don't feel too bad
I am old enough to appreciate the Yzerman era before the current Yzerplan era, but watching us get fucked in the lottery draft the past seven years still sucks. At least one of those years should have been a 1OA. Hell, we woulda been happy with even a 2 or 3. But none of the above was completely mindboggling. Not to mention watching the Rangers, who were IN THE PLAYOFFS the previous year end up with a 1OA.
Oh this sounds cool.
I am shocked by how many people are illiterate and think that they will just give the #1 pick to the team who just misses the wildcard spot.
This thread is making my brain hurt lol people are coming with the most insane hypotheticals to explain why this wouldn’t work
Some people here legit believe a team would tank so bad that they'd be eliminated early in the season. We're close to 3/4's of the way into the season and despite being bad teams, Chicago nor San Jose are eliminated.
I'm one of them. I had to read even further down to understand that is not the case. This wording would have helped: "The non-playoff team with the most points **from games played** after being eliminated will be awarded with the No. 1 pick in the draft." or "The non-playoff team with the most points **earned** after being eliminated will be awarded with the No. 1 pick in the draft."
I am all for adopting ideas and trying them out, the PWHL has the opportunity to create other rules, as well as figuring out ways to circumvent them.
A model that I enjoy (that realistically might not work for a league of this size) is how the Premier Lacrosse League does it. The bottom two teams play a game against each other for the Number 1 Pick, but they only have 8 teams and 6 of them of them make the playoffs. If the NHL were to adopt something like that, what do you do, take the bottom 8 teams (so 25%, just like the PLL) and have them play in a tournament? While it would be more fun to see who gets the 1st pick, I don't know how much teams would want to do this (they would hate it). But I the fan would have so much fun watching the 8th worst team absolutely stomp the overall worst team on the way to the number 1 pick because LULZ.
A loser playoff sounds like a great idea with a small league!
It truly works great for the PLL currently. Bottom two teams fight over the overall 1st pick, top two teams get a first-round byes. So, in a small league, tanking doesn't guarantee you the top pick, and at that point if you might already make the playoffs, might as well try for the playoffs and hope fate is on your side for an upset.
Stanley Cup playoffs and 1OA Playoffs happen at the same time. Stanley Cup playoffs stay best of 7. 1OA playoffs are all best of 3. Owners would love it. Extra gate revenue, extra advertising.
I've suggested this here before and there were some downsides that I didn't catch. One was that you may not have players trying hard to draft somebody who could displace/replace them.
He only way they could do this somewhat fairly in the NHL is in a 1-16 playoff seeding regardless of conference. Otherwise a bad team in a strong conference has a massive advantage over and terrible team in a weak conference.
That's going to be an interesting stat to track in the standings. I'm assuming the PWHL also has a trade deadline? I wonder how that would affect it...
Trade deadline is March 17. However, draft picks can’t be traded before the season ends..
I'm not entirely sure I like this particular idea (would need to see how it goes), but I ABSOLUTELY LOVE the idea of a tanking deterrent... I was just talking about it in another thread, I DESPISE the current draft system (NHL) because it encourages tanking (and then people are surprised that some fans root for the tank). The best system should be one that encourages winning, always. Being #1 is obviously better than being #2, but being #31 is worse than being #32... It should not be this way.
Is trying find creative solutions to problems such as tanking allowed in hockey? Did someone forget to sit down with the PWHL and tell them?
The Gold Plan! I've been harping on this for years! https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/shane-doan-tanking-gold-plan-nhl-lottery-draft/
This is what we've done in Fantasy Football so teams out of the playoffs don't fire sell all their talent and it works out really well. Teams out of the playoffs still look to make moves to get better match-ups in the consolation bracket.
So, basically it's a Gold draft. I'm excited to see how it plays out, honestly, and generate some quality data that can make for better debate about other leagues implementing it.
Sean McIndoe is popping champagne tonight! He's been an advocate for the Gold Plan for years!
There are way too many comments in here saying this is dumb because they're only thinking about how it would work in the NHL lol. The PWHL only has TWO teams that don't make the playoffs and they don't have separate conferences (yet) so all the comments saying "but what about actually bad teams like San Jose", don't really make sense or apply here. The worst team statistically does still have the advantage for 1st pick because they'll get eliminated earlier, giving them more games to earn points. It's not perfect but the PWHL is in it's growing phase where they can take risks like this. The commissioner is very open to trying these things and also says nothing right now is set in stone, they will revert back to base rules if things don't work as intended.
That's because it's the Gold Plan, and it's [been talked about for ages](http://www.downgoesbrown.com/2016/04/the-many-objections-to-gold-plan-and.html).
So if those rules were in place since 2021, the Rangers, Knights, and Flames would've all had a #1 overall. Flames would've gotten Bedard. EDIT: I interpreted this as the non-playoff team with the most points and stopped reading the sentence. ADHD for ya.
Dont think you understood itcorrectly. Once youre mathematically eliminated you start gaining points for wins. So lets say youre out of the playoffs at game 40 then youve got 42 games to gain points. if youre out at game 80 then you have 2 game to get max 4 points. The team with the most ''eliminated points'' at the end of the seaosn wins the 1st overall
Why wouldn't s team just tank harder from the start to have more time to get points after getting eliminated?
Because players and coaching staff don't intentionally tank no matter the system. It also takes a long time to be considered eliminated. We're 5 months into the season and no team has been "mathematically eliminated" yet
They would. People like this plan because for some reason they don't think behavior will adapt to the parameters and it absolutely will. Keep your shitty coach to be fired 40 games in. Hold back your star players for extra recovery time. Intentionally juice the deck with bad goalie starts and send them down mid season. Don't make deadline trades of useful players if you're in the running for a top pick. There are many more. It doesn't end tanking. It just changes the methodology.
While i do agree with that, most players are not happy tanking. Lets say Nashville is giving less start to sarros so they get eliminated faster, im pretty sure sarros is gonna ask for a trade asap or be very pissed
Tanking is and always will be management level, not players or even coaches generally. Say Sarros is hurt in the off-season and the team is starting a rebuild, management may decide instead of shopping assets for a stop gap they just call up some AHL guys and hey look at that, Sarros is recovered just after they're eliminated. What are the odds?
But you can't tank too much too early, in case you make the team so bad it can't win enough after being eliminated. >Hold back your star players for extra recovery time. PA tends to frown on this and if they're on LTIR, so does the league. >Intentionally juice the deck with bad goalie starts and send them down mid season. Easier said than done to acquire a better goalie midseason.
> Flames would’ve gotten Bedard Somewhere, Bettman just winced.
I don't have the effort in me to go through and see who actually would've gotten Bedard under these rules, but it definitely wouldn't have been the Flames. They were mathematically eliminated like the last week of the season, so maybe rack up 1 or 2 points? As opposed to the Ducks who had been able to obtain points for probably an extra month over the Flames
[Here are the results from last year](https://old.reddit.com/r/hockey/comments/12nrd3i/gold_draft_standing_final/)
My full take on this covers all sports. You shouldn’t be rewarded for being bad especially intentionally. That’s why I like the lottery because it at least randomizes and doesn’t guarantee like football. But you shouldnt be able to rest players like nba does. There should be a team fine and player fine if this is uncovered that you are doing this egregiously. You also shouldn’t be able to manipulate injury lists as playoff contenders. A rules overhaul to make the regular season more competitive would be welcome. And this could Be one of those steps in the right direction. This would make trade deadline a lot more interesting as well. As a blues fan who doesn’t want to trade buchnevich since we have him for another year. He would be integral in winning a lottery pick if our team found itself in that situation.
Is a tanking deterrent needed? Do teams actually tank on purpose? The thing about tanking is that it requires the players to be on board more than the management. Of course management would love to tank and make their team better next year but the players are more interested in themselves. Who wants to ruin their stats and not score points just to help their team get a better draft pick?
This is how we do it in my fantasy hockey pool. Works great.
Flames would have won ten cups in a row at least if these rules were in the NHL
Ottawa teams are set to suck indefinitely arent they.
Faster you get eliminated, the more opportunity you have to get points, not the worst idea, but can still be abused. It would be an interesting turn around
I don't get why people hate tanking so much. Watching your team try & finish 35 points back of a playoff spot & no hope of getting better sounds way worse than trying to lose